Author: Janet McKee

I currently wear many hats. My interests are genealogy, history, reading, knitting, and more. I now live in an assisted living retirement community.

40 Acres

~ Janet McKee ~ Leave a comment

The passage of time.

allenrizzi's avatarallenrizzi

I had to find something amusing from my past posts to boost my spirits today. Here goes!

Today as I drove back home from another day of fishing, I ventured off the main road to look at some estate homes mostly just to see how the other half lives. The homes were enormous (6,000 to 8,000 square feet) and all neatly perched on large acreages. As I completed my tour and got back on the main road heading for home, I mused with my wife about a dream we once shared: 40 acres.

I was brought up in Southern California but spent most of my youth in the wide open outdoors. Ranches, farms and large tracts of national forests were my playgrounds. However, I lived in a small house that my parents had purchased in the town of San Fernando, California in 1950. Because I spent so much time in…

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Guam

~ Janet McKee ~ 2 Comments

GP's avatarPacific Paratrooper

Guam

In a lot of Pacific War histories, Guam is swept aside and banished as insignificant.  How soon they forget, many might say.

In Tokyo, soundtrucks festooned with World War II colors still extol those lost in a gallant defeat. In America, elders like Louis H. Wilson Jr. and George Tweed would never forget.

Masashi Ito and Bunzo Minagawa spent young manhood into middle age in the tropical underside of an island that tourists now praise as a paradise. They were holdouts, soldiers who refused to surrender and would forage for
survival for 16 years.

Soichi Yokoi, before and after

The last known Japanese survivor, Shoichi Yokoi, held out until 1972, captured by chance as he ventured out to empty a fish trap. Yokoi had never crept out of dense cover to hear the happy shouts of Japanese tourists and honeymooners. Nor had he walked the lobby of the Hilton…

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About This Photo

~ Janet McKee ~ 1 Comment
What does Katerina see? She has a good spot for keeping an eye on the garden. There used to be another cat that came to visit. The visiting cat approached through the garden of the white house beyond the fence. This is an old photo – that white house has since been painted a dark brown.

Old Math – New Math – No Math

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allenrizzi's avatarallenrizzi

If you follow this blog regularly, you know that I am a semi-geezer who is chiseled from the stone of another era. I have a strong reverence for the 1950’s and 1960’s which polished my rough facets into a finished urban American.

I come from a time when the Three R’s were standard fare in public schools and I have benefited greatly from my education. While all three are woefully lacking in today’s education system, it is the third R – ‘rithmatic that seems to have been completely lost in its various manifestations over the years.

As you have probably guessed, I hail from a time when math was the old math: You know, the kind that made sense and was actually used on a daily basis. I was once a paperboy some six decades ago and I remember being able to make change for any dollar amount without employing…

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Make a wish!

~ Janet McKee ~ Leave a comment

Dawn's avatarEBCA

East Ballard neighbor, Roxanne Baechler-Gill’s five-year-old really wants to be a wizard, and a wishing well somehow figures into this. Accordingly, they have posted a wishing well on a tree outside their house, just across from Gemenskap Park (near NW 59th on the west side). If you’re nearby, please consider dropping a coin and/or a written wish (for anything you want!) to assist a child’s wizardly wish-granting dreams! They’re checking the wishing well every morning, just in case there are any wishes to grant.

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